Summary
We have constructed a mutex that is optimized for the case where only one thread uses it. We achieved this by allowing only a designated thread to access the mutex until another thread displaces it through the use of thread suspend and resume operations. This technique provides a modest, but possibly valuable, gain in performance in situations where code is written to work with multiple threads, but often is used by just one. It also provides a gratifying increase in complexity that will entertain programmers for many happy hours.
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References
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© 2004 Springer-Verlag New York, Inc.
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Burrows, M. (2004). How to Implement Unnecessary Mutexes. In: Herbert, A., Jones, K.S. (eds) Computer Systems. Monographs in Computer Science. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-21821-1_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-21821-1_7
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-0-387-20170-2
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